Roman Empire, Playground of the Parasites
by Hannah D
Summary: Souls have been corrupted by the sheer power of the Roman Empire. They are no longer altruistic and pure goodness. They kill and torture remorselessly. AU. Rated for later chapters. Please R & R!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to the Host. Unfortunately. I'm just using the characters/ some other stuff. You'll see.

**A/N: Just to make it really obvious and less confusing, this story is AU and set in about 37BC. Enjoy!**

**~~~~~Chapter One – Licentia Proeliator (Freedom Fighters)~~~~~**

_The Empire has grown so fast. It has only existed for seven years, since the first parasite made himself public. He called himself "Julius Caesar" the pompous git. But we did a good job ridding Rome of him. What we didn't expect was his adopted son, another parasite, taking up his father's position as dictator. That was the beginning of the end for us humans. Initially we just disappeared. But after a few years, we weren't just disappearing. People turned up in the most awful places: the gladiator rings, slavery and brothels. It was time to do something about it._

Jared lay down on his straw mattress, sweating and panting. He had spent the morning trying to train thirty new members of his resistance group in the art of combat. He hadn't gotten very far. Half of them were mere children, not yet strong enough to even hold a sword upright, let alone use it with any accuracy.

He would instead have to teach them how to run and hide, not fight. _How unhelpful is that?_ He wondered. For the last eleven months his resistance group had trained hard, learning how to fight and, most importantly, how to go unnoticed by the converted. Running and hiding would not help him to attain his goal: infiltrate Rome and free as many human prisoners as possible from the parasite-infected Empire.

_Humans,_ Jared thought. _Not those parasites that blend with humans so well. What were they?_ No one knew. Not even Doc. He had spent countless hours observing, testing and trying to remove the parasites. So far, he hadn't learned much.

Jared had fled Rome two years ago. He had wandered the Roman countryside, thinking of the sudden change of behaviour the parasite-infected leaders of Rome had shown in recent months.

They had been peaceful monsters in the beginning. Altruistic to the very end. But, with all the power they had in leading the Empire, they became corrupt. Instead of just kidnapping humans and making them into monsters, they tortured humans.

Jared remembered overhearing a group of parasites talking candidly about a gladiator match they had been to. He heard them say that they used humans in the arena. But that wasn't the only place humans disappeared to. They ended up in brothels, or slaves to any of the richest parasites in the Empire as well.

_Dwelling on the past won't change it,_ he reminded himself roughly. _Action is the only thing that will stop this._ That was what had motivated Jared to form a military-style resistance group. A group well trained in combat could free hundreds of the human playthings the parasites had collected.

So he started. He sought out some of his old friends in Rome, ones he knew would not have been turned. Doc had been the first. Then it he found Kyle and Ian O'Shea, brothers that had been raised in Rome, but were from a region in Britannia.

It had been these four men that started a resistance group they called "_Licentia Proeliator"_, or Freedom Fighters.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Still don't own anything to do with The Host. You'd all know about it if I did =)

**A/N:** **This story has two different plotlines for the first few chapters. So it's going to jump around a bit. Just warning you. **

**~~~~~Chapter Two – Nunquam Iterum (Never Again)~~~~~**

Waking up in this new world, in a new body, was different to what Wanderer had expected. Every detail of this planet was so vivid, so intense. So too, Wanderer discovered, were the emotions and thoughts of her human host. But she knew that this wasn't right. The human minds were supposed to fade away after implantation. That's what Wanderer had been told.

_That was what I signed up for! Not a battle raging inside my own body!_ Wanderer thought with a sigh. Things hadn't quite gone to plan with the implantation. Wanderer's host was still very much in her own body, and not open to any reasoning in the way of giving up her body peacefully. And worst of all, nobody could tell her why this had happened.

Wanderer had spent the first few days of her life on her new planet trying to peacefully talk the human host, who named herself Melanie Stryder, out of her body. She'd had no luck on that front. Melanie had made it crystal clear: she was _not _letting Wanderer have her body.

They shared a body. Well, that's not strictly true. They didn't share it; they fought over it. They were forced into the same body. So it didn't surprise Wanderer when she realised they could share, fight over and force their way into each other's thoughts too. She had access to some of Melanie's memories, her hopes, fears and, when Melanie was asleep, some of most closely guarded secrets.

Over a period of hours, Wanderer had found out almost all of Melanie's past. She was the daughter of a Roman senator, had lived all of her life inside the safe walls of Rome and had been married off at the tender age of twelve. Her parents had died not long after her marriage, leaving her to care for her brother Jamie, who was not much older than a toddler. Her loving husband had readily taken Jamie into his household and treated him like a son. Melanie could not have been happier. The life as the wife of a loving, rich Roman man was one she suited well, even if she was unbelievably strong-headed most of the time.

That is, until both Melanie and her husband, Octavian, were both captured by Seekers, souls that devoted their lives to hunting and capturing "wild" humans. Octavian had been implanted with a weak soul, who called himself Augustus. He was easily corrupted by the power Octavian had held before his capture. Melanie's once loving, gentle, caring husband became violent, crude and terrifying. Augustus did not tolerate Melanie's strong-headed nature, or Jamie. He was constantly in a blind rage, and nothing Melanie did could calm him down. Octavian was gone, utterly replaced by Augustus.

But Wanderer wasn't the only one using this connection to her advantage. Melanie saw Wanderer's personality, her thoughts and her experiences, and started to plot. Not to get Wanderer out of her body (she had faith that it would happen eventually), but to use Wanderer in her fight to escape, and if possible, rescue Octavian from Augustus.

She saw Wanderer's innate strength. _I need this kind of strength_, Melanie thought, _this will help me fight Augustus. Never again will he hurt me. Never again will he come within a mile of Jamie._ Despite having no control of her body left, Melanie's lips curved into the smallest hint of a smile. Hope had seeped from her share of her mind into Wanderer's part, forcing her body to react accordingly.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own The Host or anything related to it. The other characters are mine though.

**~~~~~Chapter Three – Captus (Taken)~~~~~**

A yell from the scout's post told Jared that his spies had returned. _Another way the children can make themselves useful,_ he thought. Usually the children pretended to be slaves to one of the adults of the group. This time, Kyle had gone with the children. Aside from Jared, Kyle was the best person for infiltrating and raiding.

Jared dragged his sore, sweating body off his mattress again to go greet Kyle and the others and to see what information they had gathered. As he entered the abandoned slaves quarters of the farm they were hiding in, Jared instantly knew something was wrong. He did a quick head count of the spies. He counted a number much fewer than the party that had left.

"Where are the rest?" he asked Kyle, with a growing knot in his stomach.

Kyle turned towards him and Jared no longer needed an answer to his question. Kyle's face was bruised and bloodied and he was cradling his left arm with his right. His eyes, one of which was nearly swollen closed, told Jared what he was unable to say. _They're not coming back._ It was easy to see.

He still needed to know what exactly had happened. He mentally braced himself for the horror that was to come.

"Kyle. Please, tell me what happened to the others." Jared's heart was racing, as if he was running back to Rome to find the children himself.

"We were… ambushed… by a group of those parasites. We tried to fight them off, but the children didn't know how. They were savage, relentless beasts. You could see the bloodlust driving them into frenzy. Worst they've been yet, Jared. It's getting worse." Kyle shuffled closer to Jared, leaning heavily on anything in reach. "I don't think the rest of the kids are dead though. Parasites aren't that kind these days." He was almost nose-to-nose with Jared now, the intensity of his anger was overpowering.

"Where would they be?" Jared asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"It's hard to tell. Most likely though, they'd be sold to any rich parasite with a sick fetish for children." Kyle pounded the table he was leaning on with his fist so loudly that a young girl screamed in fright.

Jared's heart sank. _That's no end for a human_. _We deserve better._

"Are you all aware of the danger of this situation?" He asked the room. "They might be tortured to give up our location, and the gods only know what else they'll have to suffer though."

Kyle's brother Ian stepped forward. "We should rescue them. It's the least we can do. The sooner the better too, before anything unforgivable happens to them."

His head spinning with the abrupt turn in the conversation and the sick images his imagination was so helpfully providing him with, Jared's military background kicked in. Plans were forming before he even had the chance to voice his approval.

"Let's start to get ready then. We leave at dawn tomorrow." Jared turned and walked out of the overcrowded room. He walked and walked, until he found a small pond. He sat down next to it, trying to absorb everything that had happened in the slaves' quarters that served as the Freedom Fighters' meeting hall. _What have I done to these children?_ He asked himself in despair. He gritted his teeth as the images floated back into his head.

In a fit of anger, he threw himself toward the pond, letting the cool water enclose him completely. Underwater, he opened his eyes. _I will get revenge for the kids. Those parasites are going to pay dearly for this._ Suddenly, a rough hand grabbed his arm and pulled hard, dragging Jared out of the pond once more. He coughed up the water he hadn't realised he had swallowed and his vision cleared. Leaning over him was Doc.

"You're not going to find those kids down there, my friend." He said with a sad smile. "But you _are_ going to find them. So get up, find some dry clothes and get onto figuring out how you are going to do this." With that, Doc pulled Jared's arm across his own shoulders and helped him up.

"You're not alone in this, Jared," Doc continued as they walked back towards their makeshift camp. "What did you think the rest of us are here for? Decoration?"

Despite himself, Jared smiled. Doc was well practiced at encouraging people in the most dire of circumstances. It worked every time. Already, Jared was thinking of how to rescue the children.

"Doc, where are the slave traders in Rome that deal with humans?" Jared asked his friend, his minding ticking over like clockwork. "If we move fast, we might be able to get to the kids before they are even sold off. If not, then…" He trailed off, not wanting to vocalise what they were both thinking. It would be next to impossible to find them once they had been sold.

Doc smiled again, in his sympathetic way. "Jared, listen. It takes half a day's walk to even get to Rome from here. Those children will be long gone by then, if not already. We need to be realistic."

Jared stopped walking so suddenly that Doc thought he had collapsed from ingesting so much water. The look on Jared's face was hard to define. It was a combination of anger and realisation. A combination that makes a person look severely confused. "What's wrong Jared?"

It took several moments for Jared to even acknowledge that Doc has spoken. He looked up, and the anger that had contorted his features before had been replaced by a sick smile. _This can't be good_, Doc thought with a sigh.

"Jared?"

"I know how we are going to do this. But I don't think you're going to like this. Not even a little bit."


End file.
